On Tuesday the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) called on the government to immediately step up efforts to make schools safe.
In a release they said that on March 22, Premier Scott Moe announced that 100,000 rapid tests were being deployed to Saskatchewan schools and that testing could begin right away. The union, though, said that the protocols to do so were not yet in place.
“Education workers have felt ignored and abandoned from the very beginning of this government’s failed attempt to keep our schools safe, and with these multiple outbreaks, the situation has become completely intolerable,” Rob Westfield, an education support worker and chair of CUPE Saskatchewan’s Education Workers’Steering Committee, said in the release.
“The province has once again abandoned its responsibility and has left school divisions struggling to create their own plans for rapid testing.”
There are many protocols that must be put in place before rapid tests can be administered in Saskatchewan schools.
“Schools have to create and distribute permission forms for parents to sign, hire qualified personnel to administer the tests and create a space to do so. This takes time, and in the meantime, our education workers are forced to put their lives at risk because they were left out of the phase one vaccinations,” Westfield added.
In an interview, Education Minister Dustin Duncan explained that the tests are being delivered on a student per capita basis based on enrollments to school divisions.
“So the 100,000 that we’re distributing as part of this round is all on a per-student basis. So basically you take the 100,000 and you look at how many students are in each of the school divisions. So they’ll receive the same amount per enrolled student in the school division,” Duncan said on March 24.
Duncan added that the kits will be distributed to school divisions, which can distribute the kits to schools as needed.
“The school divisions do have the ability based on where the needs may be. They have the ability to ship those around. So they may want to put more into one school or less. But that’s really up to the school divisions,” he explained.
The test itself will be administered by volunteers who can complete a course courtesy of the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA).
Duncan added that the only requirement is that the volunteers be over the age of 18.
He also says that most schools in the province have plans in the event of an outbreak. Ducnan addressed the concern about spread of the variant and the recent advisory for Regina and area. Each division has plans for outbreaks whether they are the COVID-19 virus or one of the variants because of the $155 million in COVID19 contingency funding.
“We know already that schools in Regina and the surrounding area are moving to remote learning to try and reduce the community spread of COVID-19, so we expect that would be the same in the event that there are, regardless of the strain, COVID-19 cases. I think that there are plans already in place by the school divisions to move to the different contingency levels to mitigate the spread among our student population and staff,” Duncan said.
